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KDADS Names New Superintendent Of Larned State Hospital

Courtesy KDADS

Attorney Bill Rein has been named to head the troubled state mental hospital at Larned, in central Kansas. As Heartland Health Monitor’s Bryan Thompson explains, the facility has long-standing problems hiring and keeping an adequate workforce.

Interim Secretary Tim Keck, of the Kansas Department on Aging and Disability Services, calls Rein the right person at the right time for the challenges facing Larned State Hospital.

Two employees testified at a legislative hearing in April that mandatory overtime and limited time between shifts are taking a toll on employees, their families, and patient care. Rein says the state hospital’s budget is sufficient for full staffing. The main obstacles now are intangible.

“They just want to be able to spend more time with their family, want to be able to get to events in the community, and those kinds of things that are equally if not more important than salary," he says.

KDADS Spokeswoman Angela de Rocha says 32 percent of the full-time state jobs at Larned State Hospital are currently open. That’s down from 37 percent last April. Those figures don’t reflect the many part-time workers at the facility.

Heartland Health Monitor is a reporting collaboration covering health issues and their impact in Kansas and Missouri.